Saturday, June 4, 2011

10 most improved cars

Buick Regal

Buick

Buick Regal? Isn't that the official car of Florida's early bird specials? Are the seats made so the driver isn't visible from the car behind? This may have been true enough for the old Regal, but no more. The sleek, racy new Regal looks like nothing that would have graced Buick showroom just a few years ago. But two things have changed that. First was Buick's rise in China, where the brand is a top seller and the Regal is seen as a crucial ingredient to General Motors' ongoing success in the market. The other thing that happened was that the Saturn brand was shuttered in the GM bankruptcy, leaving GM with a model that had been planned for the Saturn division that was all dressed up with no place to go. So it became a Buick.

This one-time darling of suburbia had fallen on hard times, as consumers turned their backs on truck-derived SUVs in favor of jacked-up station wagons. Still, the name held some equity, so while the crossover SUV Ford Freestyle and Taurus X flopped in the showroom, the thinking was that the Explorer name could attract buyers if it were a crossover. That guess has proved correct, as Ford is selling Explorers as fast as it can build them. The Explorer isn't just an improvement on the old trucky model, it is also an improvement on the Taurus X, the vehicle from which the new Explorer was derived. In an instance of less being more, a new Explorer based on the old Taurus X replaces both of those models and is more popular than they were combined.